Sunday, October 31, 2010

Red figured ware

Red figured war was produced and replaced the earlier black figured ware in about 530 B.C. and was produced until about the 3rd century B.C.It is essentially the opposite of the black figured ware.

The applied slip decoration is bone in the negative, leaving the red behind to serve as the image, in the black figured ware the black was applied as the drawing and the red was left as the background color. The advantage of this was that it allowed the painter to work the small details with his brush. In black figure ware they had to be left behind like the whites in a watercolor or scraped into the black with a point.

The painting and the aesthetics has developed steadily and during this period it is at its height. Athens was the leading producer of these potteries which were sold through out the Mediterranean world. They were enormously popular and produced in a wide range of qualities. The poor used undecorated crude pottery. The finest sorts were very expensive.

In the 18th and early 19th century these vases were affordable, they existed in huge quantities and they were a common bring-home souvenir for elegant tourists to the Greece and Italy. Many of the collections about the world got their start upon the collections of a private party.

The drawing and elegant design of the vases is of the highest caliber and they are works of art that equal the art upstairs in the more crowded picture galleries. When the galleries of paintings are too full, I go downstairs and enjoy the fine painting on the Greek vases.

To those of you who have weathered my posts on classical pottery, thank you for your stamina. My sites stats have dropped like a stone since I started posting on this. I suppose most painters would wonder why they should know about this stuff. I think that the aesthetic sense is trainable and that is done by being acquainted with the art of your culture.

I have a post to do tomorrow on color temperature and then a couple of responses to reader queries. Then who knows what. But be forewarned, I intend to do the orders of furniture and English 19th century transfer printed pottery before I am done. Gonna have to cover some architecture, and define chriselephantine for you too. See you all tomorrow when I return to the art of making paintings.

26 comments:

Having been a potter for 20 years, I really love it that you posted these. Too bad people don't appreciate the posts on pots as much as painting posts! Little do most people know the finesse necessary to create pots like that You have to get your ground just right (just as with a canvas), you have to make your paint (called slip, made out of just-right mixes of clay and pigment), you have to do it at just the right wetness (or dryness, if you want), and then you have to fire the sucker - where you often have as much as 25% fail rates due to blow-ups, runny glazes and other stuff painters have no need to deal with. I love these old pots!

Yeah, it's funny the stats have dropped - I feel you write so well it would make almost anything interesting - but,anyway, I find these designs very powerful - the fact that they come from so long ago also adds to their power - the latest post on the "Illustration" art" blog on perennity/motivation is absolutely fascinating. Bring on the English furniture! - I'm just a curious mind.

Stape! One of the main reasons I read your blog is for it's creativecontent.As a kid, I enjoyed every comic book I could get my hands on. Your blog holds my interest and attention in the same manner. I'm entertained, and learn valuable info I can use to make a better painting.I'm not calling you a comic book! Ijust think that after all the meat and potatoes, the dessert is pretty damn good too!

Stape, remember that there are lies, damn lies and statistics. I am sticking with you as I find this very interesting. Bring on the art history in all forms. As always, thank you very much for what you write!

I'm another who has enjoyed learning out this history. Where I live, we have no place to see such beautiful pieces, have to travel to the bigger cities and even then there aren't many big collections. I am looking forward to the furniture too. I first got a bit interested watching Antiques Roadshow, and then went through the royal apartments in the Louvre and was totally blown away by the furnishings. They were magnificent works of art. So I continue to appreciated my 'Stapleton Art History Class'. Thanks for taking the time to do it and find all the wonderful images.

If I had realized what you were posting, I would have been visiting and reading every post. I'm a painter and a lover of all things ancient but especially the art of ancient Greece.And I agree that to know what has gone before will increase the depth and meaning of the art one creates. I'm coming back often to read and look and think.

Still here, Stape. It takes me back to college-sitting in that dark lecture hall watching slides of these gorgeous objects click by. I visited the Met for the first time that year and I headed straight there to see them-they did not disappoint.

Jo-Ann;Stats are a usefulness meter.I don't worry too much about them, but I don't like it when I am losing people. Art history is essential to a painter so I feel I should cover it, but I think a lot of people just are not into it. Oh well.................Stape

About Me

I am a professional landscape painter.I make my living painting pictures.
In my blog I show my paintings, offer some of the techniques, ideas and methods I have learned over the years, and talk about how to make a living as an artist. I present some essays on painting, art, and hopefully amuse you some at the same time. I will also tell you about many of the fine painters I have known over the years and some who died long ago. I talk about my training in the studios of R.H.Ives Gammell and about the many artists who have mentored me along the way. I also try to explain what I THINK makes a good painting, and how to go about making one.
If you have just found this blog, I suggest you go back to the earliest posts and read forward. It is now an enormous archive of about a thousand posts. The posts start out with the most basic information and progress towards the more philosophical side of painting. I hope you will find it useful!
.............Stape

Teaching

I do teach and I do travel. If you are interested in booking workshops or having me visit and teach at your institution, school or art association please email me at stapletonkearns@gmail.com I am presently booked for several workshops in the coming year and will be announcing more . If you are interested in attending a workshop please let me know as well.